Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/528

 pebbles, the playthings of his youth, crunched beneath his feet. While thus marching on, his nose suddenly began to bleed; it was a trifling occurrence, but little matters are sometimes of great importance. A few large drops fell upon one of his sleeves; he wiped them off, and stopped the bleeding, and it seemed to him that this had cleared and lightened his brain. The sea-anemone bloomed here and there in the sand as he passed. He broke off a stalk, and stuck it in his hat; he determined to be merry and light-hearted, for he was going out into the wide world, a little beyond the entrance of the bay, as the young eels had wished to do. “Beware of bad people, who will catch you, and flay you, and cut you in two, and put you in the frying-pan.” He smiled to himself as he repeated this in his mind, for he thought he should easily find his way through the world; youthful courage is a good defence.

The sun was high in the heavens when he approached the narrow entrance to Nissum Bay. He looked back, and saw two horsemen galloping a long distance behind him, and they were accompanied by other people. But this did not trouble him: it was no concern of his. The ferry-boat was on the opposite side of the bay. Jurgen called to the ferryman, and the latter came over with the boat. Jurgen stepped in, but before they had reached half-way across, the men whom he had seen riding so hastily behind came up, hailed the ferryman, and commanded him to return in the name of the law. Jurgen knew not the meaning of all this, but he thought it best to turn, and therefore himself took an oar and rowed back. The moment the boat touched the shore, the men sprang on board, and before he was aware, they had bound his hands with a rope. “This wicked deed will cost thee thy life,” said they; “it is well we have caught thee.”

He was accused of no less than murder: Martin had been found dead, with a knife thrust into his throat. Late on the previous evening one of the fishermen had met Jurgen going towards Martin’s house. Jurgen had been known to raise his knife against Martin before this, so every one felt sure he was the murderer.. The prison was in a town at a great distance, and the wind was contrary for going there by sea; but in half an hour the bay could be crossed, and it was only a quarter of a mile from the opposite side to Nörre Vosburg, a great castle with ramparts and moat.

One of the horsemen was a brother of the head keeper of the castle, and he said it could easily be managed that Jurgen should for the present be placed in the dungeon at Vosburg, where “Long Martha,” the gipsy, had been shut up till her execution,

No notice was taken of Jurgen’s defence, although he spoke on his oath. The few drops of blood on his shirt sleeve were a witness against him. But he was conscious of his innocence, and, as there seemed no hope of immediately clearing himself, he submitted to his fate. The party landed just at the spot where Sir Bugge’s castle had once stood, and where Jurgen had walked with his foster-parents, after the burial feast, during the four happiest days of his childhood. He was led along the old path over the meadow to Vosburg, and again the elders blossomed, and the lofty lime-trees perfumed the air: it seemed but yesterday that he had been here before.